by L. E. Flynn
I’m sorry, but I can’t do what I said I was going to do. I can’t pretend it was a one-time mistake, because I don’t want it to be. I want it to happen again.
[email protected]
Look, we were both upset and going through stuff. I was pissed off at Jasper and you were mad at your girlfriend and we both agreed that it didn’t happen, because too many people would get hurt. I’m seeing someone too, you know. This was a bad fucking idea. Anyone could have seen. God, it was stupid.
[email protected]
Fuck, don’t make me feel needy here, Wizard. I know we both felt that. Kind of like in class, that whole laws of attraction thing.
[email protected]
And that just goes to show how much you don’t pay attention in class.
I skip past a bunch of one-line arguments to June, just after junior prom.
[email protected]
You bastard. You completely suck, you know? You made me go and fall in love with you and then you take her to that stupid dance and probably fucked her after. I wasn’t kidding, this is so over. In fact, this never happened. I’m deleting you. Click.
[email protected]
Wizard, it was just for show. I told you, I’m breaking up with her. We just had to do the stupid prom thing because my dad was on my back about it. He rented the limo and already got a fucking corsage and everything.
[email protected]
Yeah, because your daddy runs your life. I’m sick of hearing your sob story. God, just get over yourself. I’m not waiting around for you. In fact, there’s another guy who loves me more than you do. He’s better for me. It’s better that we go our separate ways.
[email protected]
But you don’t love him.
[email protected]
So? You can learn to love someone, it’s not that hard.
I keep scrolling until August twenty-ninth, two days before Toby disappeared.
[email protected]
You sure you want to do this? You’re going to blow the lid off your whole perfect little life. You can’t go back.
[email protected]
My life’s not perfect. Not sneaking around like this. I’m over it. Plus, I think Beau suspects something. I already told you, he knows something is up. I’m getting bad at covering my tracks. Maybe because I just don’t want to anymore.
[email protected]
What are you going to tell your dad? About the ring and stuff?
[email protected]
I don’t know. He’s going to kill me. You know, he had it in his head that I was going to marry Gabby, ever since I was fifteen years old.
[email protected]
Maybe we should just go away somewhere. Drive away and not tell anyone where we’re going.
My breath catches in my throat and I press my knee into my chest. This is it, I think. This is where they planned it. This is where I’ll find what I have been looking for.
[email protected]
We’re not going anywhere.
Then the messages stop. I blink at the screen in confusion and grimace as my stomach flips in on itself. Then I see the date for the next message.
July 1, 2018.
A week after Trixie’s graduation.
The same week she dyed her hair brown.
[email protected]
Wizard, it’s me. Please, be there.
[email protected]
If this is someone’s idea of a sick joke, it’s not funny. Leave me alone or I’ll call the cops.
[email protected]
It’s me. I did it. I went away, just like you wanted us to. I made a whole life out here. And now I’m ready for you to join me.
Wizard, you have to believe me. How can I prove it to you?
[email protected]
Show up at my door. Pick up the phone and call me. No? Okay, I’m calling the cops.
[email protected]
I can’t do that, Wizard, because it’s not safe. They’re watching me.
[email protected]
Who’s watching you? Who are you? Come on, this is really freaking me out.
[email protected]
You have a tattoo of a rosebud on the very top of your inner thigh. You only let me come over when your dad wasn’t around, because that’s not how you wanted him to meet me. You used to flash me a peace sign every time I drove away and when I asked, you said it was because you didn’t want it to be goodbye. We first had sex in the back seat of my car in the school parking lot, when it was pouring rain. Your back was pressed against the window and after it was over, you stormed into the rain and ran away. I started calling you Wizard when we were partners because that’s what you were to me, a wizard.
[email protected]
Oh my God oh my God oh my God. Toby, where are you? You realize everyone thinks you’re dead? Including me, until ten seconds ago? Why did you put me through that? It doesn’t even matter, I’ll do anything to see you again, please, please come back to me.
[email protected]
I’ll explain everything, I promise. But I need you to come to me. I’m somewhere we can finally be together with nobody else getting in our way.
I click open each email frantically, the back-and-forth banter, the plans being made. I don’t realize I’m crying until I feel tears hit the neckline of my shirt. It just hurts so badly, all of this. All the time Trixie spent on her phone, the time she snapped at me when I came up behind her and she was on the computer. This is why. He was on the other side, messaging back.
[email protected]
I’m in New Jersey. I have a place here, a job. A whole new life. It’s everything we always talked about.
[email protected]
Why New Jersey?
[email protected]
Why not?
And a day later, another message.
[email protected]
There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know. Stuff I did after you left. Things got bad. I thought you were dead, and I wanted to die too. I even tried to cut my wrists, but I couldn’t go deep enough. Maybe I knew you were still alive the whole time. But some of the things I did, I’m not sure you can forgive.
[email protected]
Whatever you did, it’s okay. I love you. We’re going to be okay.
[email protected]
I’m coming, Toby. But not yet. I can’t do that to them, to Fiona and my dad. I don’t know how to tell them. Fiona and I were supposed to go to New York together. She’s going to be devastated.
She had doubts. I read them, the words stabbing into me like daggers, my own name a deadly weapon. I wasn’t nothing to her. We were real. New York was real.
[email protected]
I don’t know if I can do this. I’m freaking out, Toby. I never even ran away as a kid, you know? My dad will blame himself.
[email protected]
I love you so much. And it won’t always be this hard, once we’re together. I’m sorry that it has to be like this. But if life were that easy, everyone would be in it.
I read as the whole plan gets hatched. Her trip to New Jersey, how she’d take the bus and hitch rides the rest of the way and use her fake ID if she had to stay anywhere. They covered every single possible scenario, every bump in the road. Except for one.
[email protected]
I’m not leaving anything behind, Toby. I’m never coming back.
I double over in pain. I imagine Trixie at the beach, kicking off her flip-flops and pulling the JERSEY GIRL shirt over her head. She had to leave something behind. Her version of a suicide note. She was scared, too afraid to cut all ties. So she left one right in plain sight, but I didn’t catch on until it was too late.
But then I get to a message that makes my blood run cold. A day after Alison’s party.
[email protected]
You said yo
u’d be here. Where are you?
[email protected]
I had to move. Someone was onto me. Just wait, lie low. I’ll let you know where I am. I love you.
[email protected]
Toby, I’m freaking out. God, where are you?
[email protected]
There’s a bridge we can meet at. Here are the directions to get there. Tonight, midnight. I’ll be waiting.
Then the messages stop abruptly, on both sides. My fingertips are numb, my heart racing so fast I’m sure it’s going to choose now to give out. I pinch my arms and legs because this must be some awful nightmare that I’m going to wake up from soon. And just when I think it can’t possibly get any worse, that my shoulders are going to break if another ounce of pain is added to them, I scroll back and not just read but actually see the words that permanently flip my whole world upside down.
But if life were that easy, everyone would be in it.
I scream out, punch my desk. I’m back in the motel with Jasper. My voice, thick with tears. I just don’t understand why she did it. Why she needed so badly to get out of her life.
Jasper, trailing little circles down my arm. If life were that easy, everyone would be in it.
There’s a ringing sound coming from far away, maybe the phone, maybe the doorbell. Or maybe it’s the ringing in my ears. I curl up in a ball on my carpet, wanting to make it all go away, wanting to rub out the past year, wishing I didn’t know any of this. I should have been like everyone else and accepted that she was in some watery grave. I could have gotten over that, but not this.
A pair of shoes appears before my eyes. Clunky black boots, the kind Jasper wears. I never locked the door. He crouches down in front of me and tries to touch me but I swat him away.
“It was you,” I sob. “It was you the whole time. You made her leave.” More pain coming from somewhere inside me, like my stomach is being torn apart, ripped open at the seams. My scream rattles my own eardrums.
“Fiona, what are you talking about?” he says as I roll away from him.
“The emails,” I yell. “I found them. I know it was you. I’m calling the police and telling them everything.”
“Wait, please,” he says, crouching down beside me and prying my face out of my hands. “Wait, please, look at me. You don’t know what you’re saying. Can we please talk about this? What emails are you talking about?”
I try to sit up but it hurts too much. I look at the walls, the boxed-up Barbies I didn’t have the heart to get rid of, the spot where my sewing machine used to be. I don’t look at him. I’m alone with him and he did this and he could hurt me, shut me up. I want to cry out for Beau to come back, but he’s gone and nobody can help me.
“It was you. If life were that easy, everyone would be in it? You were him. You—you—”
“No,” he says, gripping my wrists. “I can explain everything. Will you let me explain?” His eyes are wide and unblinking and his voice is getting faster, higher, more panicked, and that’s the scariest thing of all, Jasper coming apart in front of me. I pull away from him and he starts moving his mouth, gaping like a fish, but no sound is coming out. Maybe that’s what happens. Maybe everyone gets a quota of lies and he has used all of his.
“How,” I say, pushing my back against my desk. “How could you do that to her? How could you—pretend to be him? Don’t you know what you did?” I start to cry, huge tears that make my whole body convulse.
“Fiona,” Jasper says, his eyes bulging, but this time it’s like he’s underwater. Except, the more I kick my feet, the closer he gets. His hands are on my shoulders now. I know his secret. He knows I know. What is he going to do to me?
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he says, but so quietly that I can almost convince myself I never heard anything.
“What did you do to her?” I wiggle away from him. What is he capable of?
“It just happened. I didn’t mean it. Please. I’ll tell you, I swear I’ll tell you the truth. But there’s something wrong.”
“Everything’s wrong,” I say, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “It’s all wrong. Every second of the whole time I have known you was wrong.”
I stand up too fast and almost immediately I’m on my knees again, grabbing at the carpet. This pain is coming from inside me, inside my body, not from the words Jasper is saying. He’s right—something is wrong. I must be dying, eaten alive by everybody’s secrets, and this one won’t fit inside me. There are too many lies cloistered in there already, jostling for space.
“You need to go to the hospital,” Jasper says, his face ghost-white, except I don’t know what his panic is for, because I’m dying or because he’s afraid I’ll tell. Maybe he wants me to die, because his secret dies with me.
“No,” I say, but the stabbing in my right side is more intense than ever and I know there’s something very wrong with me. There are too many secrets and they all want out. Something is ruptured. Some vital organ. Maybe my heart, if it’s even still beating.
I don’t have a choice, so I let Jasper lead me to my car and strap me into the passenger seat. I don’t remember much about the ride except his hand on the back of my neck. At first I recoil from his touch, thinking he’s trying to strangle me. What would he do to keep me quiet?
“Where is she?” I mutter under my breath. “Where is she now?”
“I’m going to make it all right,” he says, but when he touches me again, I flinch.
Even in the hospital parking lot, I don’t want to go inside. I just want to stay in the car and wait to wake up from the nightmare. But Jasper drags me in by the hand, his eyes wild.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Jasper says once we’re in a too-bright emergency room. “She’s sick.”
Usually, you have to wait in the emergency room. I waited for hours the time I cut my finger open on a knife while I was cutting fruit. Mom wrapped it in a tea towel and drove me to this very hospital, perfectly calm, even as my blood soaked through the towel.
Today, I don’t have to wait. Questions are shot at me like bullets. Are you on drugs? Have you been drinking? Did you ingest anything toxic? Do you have a history of thyroid problems?
I want to tell them everything. All of my secrets and especially what Jasper did, whatever it was, because I know it was his fault. He did something to her and she’s never coming back.
But before I can say it, everything goes dark.
91
THE PURPOSE OF an appendix has long been debated. Apparently, it was seen as useless for years, but now doctors believe it stores good bacteria and is involved in immune functions. If that’s true, mine didn’t do its job. Mine decided to betray me, just like the people I let into my life.
“The surgery went great,” the doctor told me when I woke up afterward. “No complications. We had to perform an emergency appendectomy. We managed to get it out before it ruptured. You were lucky.”
I nodded, feeling groggy and numb and not lucky at all. He kept going on about how if left untreated, an inflamed appendix will burst and spill into your abdomen. That part can kill you. Something that’s supposed to help protect your body from bad things can be what blows you up.
“You’re lucky he brought you in when he did,” the doctor says now, gesturing to the door. “Your friend. He made the right call.”
“My friend,” I mouth, my lips cotton-dry. There’s that word again, lucky. I’m not. I didn’t mean to hurt her. Even though it feels like my brain is wrapped in something fuzzy, like gauze, I need to know the truth.
“He has been waiting to see you, but if you’d rather not have visitors, I’ll tell him to head on home. We also called your mother. She’s on her way here.”
I don’t want to see Jasper. I don’t want to see Jasper ever again but I need to see him, because otherwise I’ll never know.
“Did he save my life?”
The doctor gives me a smile like he feels sorry for me, like I’m asking the wrong questi
ons. “If you hadn’t come to the hospital when you did, things might have been a lot worse. But I promise, you’re in the clear now. You won’t even miss that appendix.”
He’s trying to make a joke but I know what’s under his words. He thinks Jasper is a good person, someone who cares, someone who made the right call. Someone who helps, not hurts. He’s wrong.
Jasper walks in, staring at the floor, and folds into a chair beside my bed like he’s purposely trying not to take up too much space. “How are—” he starts, but I don’t let him finish.
“You did something to her.” My voice is small and far away and I’m weirdly detached from my emotions. Maybe some of those went out with the appendix. The useless ones, like caring. “You hurt her. Where is she, Jasper?”
His eyes dart around, like he’s trying to make sure we’re alone. I almost wish we weren’t. Hospitals are supposed to be safe, but he could still hurt me like he hurt her. He could make it look like an accident.
“You made her think he was still alive,” I say when he doesn’t respond, my voice almost a whisper. “Is she still alive?”
He sighs and then I realize he’s crying, his head hanging down like it’s too heavy for his neck. I stare at his blond roots, at who he really is. “It was never supposed to go that far. It just started out because I wanted to know the truth. That she was seeing someone else. I didn’t know it was him, but I knew her well enough to know she was covering something up. And finally, I saw her with him, running through the rain together to his car. I was going to surprise her with flowers, but I just stood outside and watched them together.” He clenches his hands.
“The next day in the lab, she acted like he didn’t exist, same as always. But something had changed. I gave her the chance to tell me herself. I asked her point-blank if she was seeing someone else, and she said no. So I hacked into her email and found their messages. Then he was gone, and for a while, I thought she could be happy with me. But I could never make her happy. I was so mad, Fiona. Mad at her and mad at myself and mad at Toby. So I hacked into his email and played a really stupid joke. They made it easy. Their passwords were each other’s first and last names.” He pauses. “Then it all got so out of control.”
